In Part 1, I argued that Starbucks China most interesting competitor is not Luckin Coffee. It is HeyTea, an upscale Starbucks-type business focused on tea (something Chinese consumers really, really like). And to their credit, HeyTea appears to be mostly focusing not on digital innovation but on product development and continually thrilling their customers. Which […]
China / Asia is usually the most dynamic frontier for retail – and especially when it integrates with ecommerce. This is the result of a really big market and never-ending hyper-competition. It means there is always frantic innovating just to stay in the game. It’s a space I generally avoid because of the degree of […]
A couple of topics for today. About how all business begins and ends with the customer. HeyTea and Why You Have to Thrill Your Customers. There was an interesting article last week about retail tea company HeyTea – and their rumored funding round at a price of 16B RMB ($280M). HeyTea is a popular and […]
Jeffrey Towson argues that Chinese startups like Luckin Coffee, Mobike, Didi Chuxing, and WeWork are facing increasing challenges. He says that these companies are facing more competition, regulatory scrutiny, and rising costs. As a result, it is unclear if these companies will be able to achieve profitability in the long run.
Digital China has arrived. It has unicorns, huge market opportunities and a pervasive cultural impact. Everything is now at world-class scale. Unfortunately, the distorting impact of hot money and hype has also scaled up. And this appears to be increasing. But first…consider joining my executive education course Jeff’s Asia Tech Class for deeper insights into […]
The Luckin Coffee SEC filing is out. So we can finally see their numbers. This is Part 2 of what I think is being misunderstood about Luckin. Part 1 is here. #5: Luckin is not really about increasing mass-market coffee consumption in China. Luckin is engaged in a Herculean effort to get Chinese to drink […]
So Luckin has filed for an IPO and we finally got to see their numbers. And yes, there are red flags all over the place. Big operating losses, funky corporate structures, speculative revenue growth and so on. And this is not uncommon in a tech / internet ipo. But I don’t recall ever seeing this […]
在第1部分，我详细说明了我参观几家瑞幸咖啡门店的情况。这是一个来势凶猛的新兴企业，它致力于在中国的零售咖啡业打败星巴克。所以，在第2部分，我的问题是：瑞幸咖啡能干掉星巴克吗？